I chronicle nonsense, mostly about the news, sometimes about pop culture. If you don't think it's nonsensical, then yell at me in the comments.

Friday, January 25, 2013

Slut-Shaming Feminism

As we all know, many things have changed in society. We have a black president in a country that built its economy on the backs of chattel African slavery. Gays can get married and raise families in numerous countries and a few states. Women were just allowed to apply for combat roles in the military. One thing hasn’t changed, though: Women are still the n****rs of the world.

Look at the situation in India. In Afghanistan. In Pakistan. Actually, Look at the f***ing USA! People talking about “legitimate rape” and old white men mandating intrusive procedures on women’s...well..lady parts. We are the biggest producers of misogynistic and unrealistic images of women in the media. This country is more obsessed with Manti Te’o’s fake girlfriend than the life of one of his schoolmates’ ACTUAL rape and subsequent intimidation, then suicide (Her name is Lizzy Seeberg, in case you’re wondering. RIP). Every time there’s a celebrity breakup with the man’s infidelity involved, we act like “boys will be boys”, and they make an apology tour, and they’re back on top. The second we find out Kristen Stewart cheated on Sparkles the Magic Vamp (Sorry, forgot his name), tabloids label her “trampire”. that is not fair at all. There are so many reasons to not like Kristen Stewart, but demonising her for some indiscretion of which I’m sure millions of people are guilty every day is ridiculous. Women deserve just as much fair treatment as their penised counterparts.

This leads me to the scenario that occured earlier this week. A photographer friend of mine asked if he could use my house/bedroom to do a lingerie shoot for a local company. The idea of a scantily clad woman in my bed made my mouth say, “yes” before it dawned on me that said woman would be in my bed while I would be at work, but oh well. A few hours later, I received a facebook post about a photo in which I was tagged. It was from the model; it was a sample photo from the shoot, with a comment thanking me for the use of my house. Looking at the picture, All I could think was, “Oh no. Thank YOU!”

Unfortunately, the other comments were not quite as positive. One guy seemed to just be trolling with absurd comments, and two women seemed to think that my friend was demeaning herself by modeling for such a subject, and not portraying the right image. My model friend is a feminist, which she pointed out, so most angering comment was, “well, you’re not dressing like a feminist”.

What the hell is that? People, seemingly mostly in America, like to pigeonhole people. The feminists of this nation are not immune to this, neither in the pigeonholing nor being pigeonholed. People of the world, or at least the five of you who read this: the feminist is NOT what you think. Feminists do NOT all dress like men and spell “women” WOMYN. They don’t all get snippy if a man opens a door for them every once in awhile. They’re not all porn-hating, asexual militants. They don’t all burn their bras and stand in front of city halls and scream in megaphones about toppling the patriarchy.

You know who feminists are? They are people who see the gross inequality in how women are treated compared to men, and they fight to do something about it. That is the only sterotype that is true about them. They are men and women. They are women who host slut walks in their towns to show that it doesn’t matter how they dress, there is no excuse for sexual assault. They are men who don high heel pumps for Walk a Mile in Her Shoes. They are Joss Whedon, who when asked why he writes so many strong female characters, he answered, “because you still have to ask that question”. Furthermore, feminists are human beings, and they can do whatever the hell they want.

We are all sexual beasts. We want to feel sexy, and like sexy things. Female feminists wear lingerie and hot pumps and tight dresses and dance ‘til dawn and enjoy responsible sexual practises, which may include actual SEX [gasp]! Male feminists respect all that about women, but you’ll probably catch them inadvertently staring at your legs, or breasts, or butts, or whatever gets them off. We're dudes, after all. A woman doing an underwear shoot doesn't diminish her feminism any more than me being a gay rights activist diminish my heterosexuality.

A goal of feminism today is knowing the difference between what is empowering and what is demeaning, and knowing that a woman can make her own decision to do whatever she wants with no more judgement than what a man would endure. It also has to do with respecting a woman AND her decisions, even if you don't agree with them. You can't hold your feminism card if you're trying to slut-shame someone at the same time. Respect each other.

Also, if my friend who modeled in my bedroom reads this, where the hell did you put my bondage ropes?

2 comments:

We aren't in a post-racial society despite the current American president's colouring. Saying that women are the niggers of the world is appropriating another downtrodden group's terms and is *seriously* not cool. Just say that they are an underclass or some other descriptive term.

It's a line from a John Lennon song that I've used in many previous posts. Even though we're in a mythical post-racial society, the phrase simply points out that we in America (and most of the world) treat women the same way we have treated anyone with a derogatory term as incendiary as the term "nigger", sometimes worse.